The most pertinent prior art known to the applicant includes United States Letters Patent No. 3,613,360 issued Oct. 19, 1971 to Howes.
Conventional annular combustors employed in air breathing turbines have a large number of fuel injectors. In small gas turbines this causes numerous difficulties and becomes impractical. For example, fuel consumption will decrease as turbine size is decreased and that will in turn require a decrease in the fuel passage size of each fuel injector if desired atomization is to be obtained. However, as fuel passage size is reduced, clogging problems increase significantly. This in turn can lead to the development of undesirable hot spots as well as combustion inefficiencies.
Furthermore, in small turbine engines, low speed operations may be difficult due to low air velocity and the resulting poor atomization of fuel, which in turn causes unreliable and/or inefficient combustion.
The present invention is directed to overcoming one or more of the above problems.